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U.S. senator doesn’t know what sexual assault is

Sen. Jeff Sessions could use a lesson in what consent means.

CREDIT: AP Photo/John Bazemore, File
CREDIT: AP Photo/John Bazemore, File

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) does not think the nonconsensual groping and fondling that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump bragged about on a newly-released tape from 2005 constitutes sexual assault — a claim that runs contrary to the Department of Justice’s definition of sexual assault.

In a video published by the Washington Post on Friday, Trump bragged about how he would use his status as a celebrity to try to grope and kiss women, telling NBC’s Billy Bush that he would “just start kissing them.”

“I don’t even wait,” Trump added. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

The U.S. Department of Justice defines sexual assault as “any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient,” including actions like fondling. Clearly, grabbing a woman by the genitals without her explicit consent fits this definition.

But Trump’s surrogates have been quick to deny that.

“I don’t characterize that as sexual assault. I think that’s a stretch. I don’t know what he meant,” Sessions told the Weekly Standard in an interview Sunday night. The interviewer followed up by asking Sessions to clarify whether he thought grabbing a woman by the genitals — something Trump also described doing in the video — was sexual assault.

“I don’t know. It’s not clear that he — how that would occur,” Sessions said.

Sessions is far from the only Trump surrogate to attempt to downplay the harm caused by Trump’s comments. In a video recorded by journalist Christa Dubill, a survivor of sexual abuse is shown in tears after having her concerns about Trump’s comments dismissed by Trump surrogate Omarosa.

Since the tape surfaced Friday, the Trump campaign has attempted to pivot away from the comments, calling them “locker room banter” and telling voters to focus on Trump’s actions, not his words. But Trump’s actions also reveal a history of abuse towards women. Earlier this year, a Miss USA contestant in 1997 told the New York Times that Trump had once kissed her without her consent. And that’s far from the only complaint women have levied against Trump — in 1997, Jill Harth filed a complaint against Trump in for repeatedly trying to touch her genitals without her consent, and once trying to rape her at his Florida estate in Mar-a-Lago.

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Trump himself has denied that the actions described on the tape constitute sexual assault, telling Anderson Cooper during the second presidential debate that “this was locker room talk.”

“We need to get on to much more important and bigger things,” he said. “Nobody has more respect for women than I do.”

Survivors of sexual assault would likely take issue with Trump’s dismissal of sexual assault as an unimportant and small issue, however. After the video of Trump’s comments was released Friday night, thousands shared their stories of sexual assault on Twitter using the hashtag #NotOkay.

Sexual assault is extremely pervasive in the United States — according to a 2011 government survey, nearly one in five women reported being sexually assaulted. According to statistics from the Rape Abuse Incest National Network, an American is sexually assaulted every two minutes.

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Yet only an estimated 16 to 35 percent of sexual assaulted are reported to law enforcement. According to Department of Justice statistics, 13 percent of sexual assault survivors did not report their assault because they believed the police would not do anything to help, and 8 percent believed it was not important enough to report.

The words of Trump surrogates like Sessions and Omarosa only serve to perpetuate the feeling of helplessness that survivors often feel when trying speak about, let alone report to authorities, their sexual assault. To call fondling and groping without consent “a stretch” for constituting sexual assault plays into the fear that survivors of sexual assault will not be believed even if they speak up about their experience. And for a United States senator to not know whether grabbing a woman’s genitals without her consent is sexual assault reinforces the idea that sexual assault is a minor issue that can be glossed over. For the 284,000 Americans that are sexually assaulted each year, it is anything but.